Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY

Situated along the river in north Yonkers is the appropriately named Hudson River Museum. Easily overlooked by the colossus to the south, it is a charming place to visit, especially when the weather is nice, which would make it as these photos show, a must see in autumn.

The facility has two major buildings for the public to peruse, one is the original Glenview Mansion, an ornate stone clad victorian structure built in 1876 by the Wall Street banker John Bond Trevor (1822-1890). The family retained ownership until his widow died in 1922 and they sold the family home to the city of Yonkers for the Yonkers Art Museum, soon to be renamed the Hudson River Museum.

By the 1960s they added a brutalist style entrance wing with exhibition galleries and a planetarium, which kept bus loads of schools kids entertained over the last five decades.

Obviously the collection is based on the Hudson River School, the scholars led by Laura Vookles, have staged numerous exhibitions over the years such as the one on American genre painting a niche of American art that received high marks from dealers, who that thought the Met was too snobby to hold a show and the New York Historical Society simply too dysfunctional. A more recent show that was extremely well put together was Wyeth Wonderland.